


An Ugly Habit

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-05
Updated: 2010-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:55:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael: Long story.<br/>Madeline: Whatever.</p><p>--'Good Intentions'</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ugly Habit

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Picture Worth 1000 Words Challenge.

Frank Westen is a college boy.

That's what Madeline tells her parents when he starts picking her up Friday nights in his beat-up old car and keeps her out long past curfew. Actually, he's a highschool dropout with the mind of a mechanic--if not always the skills of one--who likes warm beer.

He doesn't smoke. "I like how it tastes on you," he tells her once, in a rare moment of open, gruff affection; Madeline's never been happier to have stolen that first Marlboro from Aunt Louise's purse two Christmases ago.

* * *

She didn't mean to fall asleep.

It's a rainy Saturday. The boys are stuck for something to keep them out of trouble, and Frank--well, it's only been a week since he lost his job at the warehouse; he's mostly interested in nursing his woes in the garage. At breakfast, Madeline knows they're in for stormy weather: Frank is surly, so Michael's surly, so Nate's bouncing off the walls with nervous energy, yammering nonstop bad jokes--jokes that Madeline, full-up with nerves herself, can't help laughing at a little too loudly.

It's almost a relief, near noon, when she hears Frank's raised voice--and Michael's, raised right back--over the sound of the washing machine. It's never nice when Westens fight, but it's always better than _waiting for_ Westens to fight.

Things end the way they usually do--slamming doors, sullen silence--and neither of them turn up for lunch. Madeline laughs at more of Nate's silliness over their sandwiches, gives him an extra brownie before he scampers off; then, wanting to grab a few minutes' peace, she lights a cigarette and stretches out on the sofa.

The next thing she knows, something cold and wet has spattered her bare arm. Opening her eyes, she finds Michael standing next to her, a tall plastic cup upside down in his hand, a dark splotch of cola on the carpet. "Michael!" she exclaims, rolling groggily down to kneel by the spill. "What on earth--that's going to stain!"

He gives her a familiar look: the look of a teenager who knows exactly how much smarter than his mother he is. His left cheek is swollen, starting to bruise. "So I should've gone to get some water instead," he asks flatly, "while your cigarette burned right through the carpet?"

She blinks at him, then looks down again--and there's her cigarette in the middle of the puddle, burnt-black patch underneath.

Madeline picks it up and drops it in an ashtray. "Get me salt and tonic water and paper towels," she says, without looking up.

Michael hesitates--deliberately, she's sure. When he finally goes, she hears him mutter, "Will that take out the scorch mark, too?"

She waits until he's in the kitchen before answering: quietly angry, mostly at herself. "Of course not."

* * *

She'd only wanted one cigarette.

Hospitals aren't supposed to be comfortable; Madeline understands that. She even understands the no-smoking rule--although that doesn't make it any easier to live with, especially while she's sitting at Frank's bedside, waiting for him to die.

Nate's there with her, which is a help. She'd called the number Michael gave her in case of emergency, but even though the secretary--or whoever--she spoke to was very polite, Madeline doubts her message will be passed on in time.

She tries not to doubt that, if by some miracle it does reach him, Michael will care enough to call back.

The days aren't so bad, but by evening, the smell of disinfectant and bedridden people and the beep of Frank's monitors and the slow rasp of his breathing get deep under Madeline's skin. On the third night, she rises from her misshapen plastic chair, tucks her purse under her arm and tells Frank, "Well, it's that time again, honey," the way she does every time she has to duck out, as if he were awake to hear.

She flicks her lighter the second she steps into the muggy outdoor air and, moments later, exhales a perfect plume of smoke. She finishes her first cigarette in no time at all and, without thinking, lights a second from its embers.

It's not until she takes a drag off the third that her hands stop shaking.

By the time she gets back to Frank's room, he's gone.

* * *

Madeline doesn't need to know everything about Michael's life.

She knows about his clients, of course: the jobs he takes when someone needs help or he needs to pay bills. She's proud of him for those jobs, and she's pleased that he comes to her for help with them sometimes--even though she knows he only does when he has no other choice.

But there are other things. The reason Michael's in Miami instead of some war zone halfway around the world. The reason Sam or Fiona shows up every couple months with a plastered-on smile and a few concealed weapons, "asking" to stay a while. The blank look Michael gets sometimes, shuttered and distant and, somehow, awfully _cold_.

She used to pester him for explanations, thinking that, if she could understand those parts of his life, maybe she'd be a little closer to understanding _him_. But those conversations usually ended in fights, frustration, or, worst of all, one of Michael's blank looks.

"We've all got habits, Maddie," Sam said once, rolling the cap from his latest beer between his fingers. "Mike's is secrecy. He's just used to not telling people things they don't need to know."

"I'm his mother," she'd replied archly, tapping ash off her cigarette for emphasis. "I want to know what's happening in my son's life."

The hell of it is, the longer he stays in Miami--the more mornings she shuffles out to the kitchen to find Sam or Fi loading guns at her table--the more she looks at Michael and sees Frank, if Frank had been disciplined, trained and, God forbid, _driven_ \--the more she knows...

...the less she really believes that.

 

End.


End file.
